Solar Powered Smart Irrigation System

In the field of agriculture, a proper method of irrigation is of utmost importance because of two main reasons: lack of rains & scarcity of land reservoir water. Continuous extraction of water from the earth has been reducing the groundwater levels due to which many of the agricultural lands have been pushed slowly into the zones of un-irrigated lands. Another very important reason of this is the uncalculated use of water due to which a significant amount of water goes wasted. To overcome this problem, an automatic irrigation system can be used which derives power from solar energy through photovoltaic cells and by which, the dependency on erratic commercial power can be reduced. In this proposed system, solar energy is used to operate an irrigation pump. An automatic pump control using a moisture sensor and a microcontroller is implemented. Sensor are placed on the agricultural field and it continuously sense the water level in them and based on the information given by the sensors, the microcontroller controls the water flow to the field by making Pump on/off. Further, this project can be extended by interfacing it with a IOT, so that the farmer can be aware of the soil moisture level and by that, can control the switching operation of the water pump from a remote area.